The Trouble with Tanuki
by Thimble
Summary: Er... Doumeki Down the D- Tanuki Hole
1. Someday, In the Rain

Title: **The Trouble with Tanuki**  
Fandom: xxxHolic  
Characters: Watanuki, Doumeki, with supporting roles by the cast of _xxxHolic_ and _Man of Many Faces_  
Summary: Er... Doumeki goes down the tanuki hole.  
Notes: This story is tucked in just after Book 10, except the seasons are a bit wacky. It is a not-sequel to "Five Days In Summer," which is unnecessary to read, but does explain what Himawari was up to in Yuuko's shop, and the source of the tanuki's grudge. (Other notes at ends of chapters.)  
Disclaimer: Pauper sum ego, nihil habeo.  
Warnings: Super-verbosity. Super!Grumpy!Watanuki. Super!Hungry!Doumeki. Cheesy, cheesy innuendo. Crack. Inept writing.

**Chapter One: Someday, In the Rain**

_Watanuki_

It was a terrible day, and the end of a terrible week of similarly terrible days spent trudging between spooky-spiritual sites set like beads on a string about the backside of Japan with an antique camera and that idiot Doumeki in tow like a laconic, irritating dinghy, a dinghy who broke his own arm with malice aforethought and made Watanuki mix metaphors because that was just the kind of maritime vehicle he was like – irritating.

"You mean similes," said Doumeki.

See? Irritating.

Today should have been slightly less terrible, because at least they were back in his home city, but today it was raining. Terribly. Also, stupid Doumeki had insisted on walking Watanuki back from the station. It wasn't _his_ fault that they'd lost one of their umbrellas plugging the tiny puckered maw of a Thing that looked like a balloon and _wanted to eat him through a straw_ (which had never yet put Watanuki in a good mood) and _that_ meant they had to share and it was awkward and jostling and also annoyingly soggy.

So they trudged through water falling like grey and silver sheets around them, their only company the myriads of dour, suited businessman returning from work, who were also having a terrible week, or so said the bags under their eyes – dark like raccoon rings – and their silent, splattering journeys up and down the wet street.

Once again, Watanuki was shoving his umbrella more over the other boy, so that his plaster cast didn't dissolve in the rain, which would be troublesome, when another businessman – this one tall and burly under a heavy jowl and paunch – almost walked through him as if he wasn't there, and would have knocked him flying with his brief-case if Doumeki hadn't steadied him.

Then the jowly businessman stood on what looked like a small, squeaky, pink elephant toy and overbalanced over a set of steps ahead of them in the street, and Watanuki reached after the obnoxious man trying to catch him, and Doumeki who was already off balance tried to pull Watanuki back but failed, and failed again to catch himself with his other arm in a cast and sling, and then they were all

f  
a  
l  
l  
i  
n  
g.

_Doumeki_

He opened his eyes. It was blurry, but he could make out the shape of someone squatting over him, elbows and legs folded like a daddy-long-leg spider, hair sticking out around the head like a bedraggled kitten's.

"Are you quite sure you're not dead?" Watanuki said, dark blue eyes worried.

Doumeki blinked. It was still blurry. Ah, yes: "Rain in my eyes," he said.

"Oh!" Hands fumbled around his face and slid something warm around his ears. Glasses. He was wearing Watanuki's glasses. It was still blurry. But nice.

"Can you move your fingers and toes?"

"Working on it."

"You did not have to land under me," the other boy said precisely. "Idiot."

"Hn," said Doumeki.

Doumeki had a dream, a fantasy, perhaps a bit more carnal than a boy who was going to be a priest should have but whatever, he was young. He'd rescue Watanuki from some monster or other and then, because the boy was injured _just_ a little, or maybe shocky (he wasn't picky), Doumeki would pick the boy up, cradle him tenderly, and take him home. Probably to Watanuki's flat – there were always people around his home temple – and then, once they'd towelled each other off and any minor wounds were bandaged, then, when it was just the two of them, alone, Watanuki would look him straight in the eye and _make him food_. Oh yeah. _Hanazushi_ with the coloured rice spilling out like flowers, fox-eared _inari-zushi_, those little three-flavour riceballs... and then there was _shogen ryori_ cooking, which took _days_. The glasses steamed.

But, since his dream didn't look entirely likely to come true tonight, what with being flat on his back on a rain-sodden street, Doumeki would have to fall back on the old standby – trading injuries for snacks.

"I think I might have cracked my other arm," he said thoughtfully, still looking up. Watanuki's worried frown deepened to a scowl visible even through the blur of the glasses. "I... may not be able to feed myself tonight." The other boy started to twitch angrily, and Doumeki subsided, lifting his arm and wiggling his fingers to prove it wasn't actually broken.

He squinted through the borrowed glasses – the lens on the right wasn't bad to see through, just damp. Over Watanuki's shoulder he could see little men in suits with tired rings under their eyes gather around the other fallen man.

Watanuki's eyes were doing that thing again - the left was the normal dark blue, the right had shifted to a murky yellow he was familiar with from looking in the mirror every morning. Watanuki squinted at him. "Maybe it's just the glasses... but, one of your eyes just turned blue." Now, over Watanuki's shoulder, Doumeki saw all the tired businessmen – without seeming to twitch or move at all – become smaller, their noses sharpening, and striped furry tails protruding from the slits at the back of their business suits, and, somehow, they _had been like that all along._ One of them kicked the prone man and was applauded briskly by the others.

Doumeki frowned. "I think I'm borrowing your Sight again."

"I'll ask Haruka-san about that when I see him next: he'll know why that happens," said Watanuki, looking rather happy at the thought.

Doumeki said nothing. Watanuki regularly took delight in pointing out how Doumeki of Dreams was wiser, nicer, and all around cooler than the junior article. This was fine. He, too, admired his grandfather as a paragon of all things a scion of the Doumeki family should aspire to be. But, and he felt this should be made clear if only in the quiet fastness of his own mind, there was only one member of the Doumeki family who got handmade bento lunches cooked for him _every single day_ and it wasn't the dead one. Top that, Honourable Grandfather.

Over Watanuki's shoulder, the tiny, furry businessmen were moving off in semi-random directions, leaving their victim to slowly pull himself upright. Then one of the little guys met Doumeki's eyes, pointed, and called the others, who began moving towards them with an intent look on their sharp-nosed, ring-eyed faces. He levered himself up on an elbow, then staggered to his feet, ignoring Watanuki's protests.

He might regularly dwell on all the delicious foodstuffs to be extracted from Watanuki's kitchen through means innocent or nefarious, because they were tasty, or tease the boy into spitting like a drunken cat, because the enthusiasm was warming, or hang around even when Watanuki claimed he wasn't wanted, just because, but there was only one element of his little fantasies that he couldn't be without - the part where Mr 'Excuse Me While I Throw Myself Back Into Mortal Peril' Watanuki survived. "Get moving!" he said, shoving the boy away with his uninjured arm.

And then they were swarming all over him.

NOTES:

_tanuki_ Japanese raccoon-dog. Sometimes translated as 'badger' in stories in English. Often appears in J. fairytales as a trickster figure with magical powers, along with foxes (kitsune), and tengu (crow). Possessed of an unusually large scrotum which (in the stories) is unusually transformable. No, I am not explaining this further.

_tiny puckered maw..._ I once, for various reasons of my own, did basic research on Japanese Buddhist sects in a book printed in the Meiji Era (seriously, how cool is that?), which started with a description of various unseen monsters and burning hells and such, and the Thing with the enormous appetite and tiny mouth turned up there. In honour of doing any research at all, here 'tis.


	2. Help!

**Chapter Two: Help!**

_Watanuki_

Watanuki slammed open the doors to Yuuko's shop.

"Help! Doumeki's been kidnapped by tiny, furry businessmen!"

There was no-one in the shadowy, ornate interior, except for one solitary spider which liked to spin webs in the high curlicues of the crimson frame of a garish ornamental screen. He ignored his eternal enemy for now, kicked off his shoes, and ran through the building and out to the back garden, where Yuuko and Himawari lounged on the veranda watching the rain, and Maru and Moro and Mokona, wrapped in yellow plastic raincoats, splashed happily through the puddles and wet grass.

"Help! Doumeki's been kidnapped by tiny, furry businessmen!"

Yuuko languidly sipped sake from a delicate porcelain dish. In the small walled garden, Maru and Moro and Mokona barely stopped their rain-soaked game of tag to glance his way. Only Himawari dropped the end of Yuuko's black braid that she was holding and pressed her hands to her mouth in alarm. That was because Himawari-chan was a lady of _grace_ and _sensibility_ who understood the import of this kind of statement. A tiny yellow bird flew out from under her hair as if to punctuate her alarm. But wait - Himawari-chan was in the shop? In Yuuko-san's clutches! Himawari's soul was in imminent danger of being extracted by heartless and insane fortune-tellers! _Noooooo!!_

"You're dripping, Watanuki," said Yuuko gently.

See? Heartless.

"We don't have time for this!" he exclaimed. "They swarmed all over him – they were rabid! - and knocked me away. Then they shoved him into this really tacky little mini with a furry tail dangling off the antenna and piled in after him and drove away tootling their little horn!

"I tried to stop them," he said to Himawari, his mouth thinning to an unhappy line. "I really did."

She nodded minutely, her grave eyes taking in the grazes on his hands and the mud and rips on his coat.

"But don't you want to recount your adventures through all the spooky-spiritual sites set like beads on a string about the backside of Japan armed only with an antique camera?" Yuuko quirked her fine straight eyebrows in hurt. "You don't even want to tell me about the onsen in the mountains?"

"Nothing happened at the onsen hot springs," said Watanuki. "Nobody scrubbed my back, not even that crazy Russian guy with the wrinkles. Doumeki broke his arm because he fell out of a tree and was an idiot. That is all. Which brings us back to the matter at hand. Help?"

"Did you bring souvenirs?"

He held out a bag mutely. It was pounced on with ravenous glee by the regular inhabitants of the shop. "Doumeki's been kidnapped. Don't you care?"

"Do you, Watanuki-kun?"

"Well, of course I do," Watanuki explained matter-of-factly. "If I don't rescue him then something horrid will happen and it will have been all my fault and either he'll haunt me or I'll be stuck cooking for him for the rest of my life and some things are just too horrible to contemplate. Stupid Doumeki. He does this on purpose, you know."

Watanuki had a nightmare, a recurring one, which woke him sweating at night more than he cared to admit. There weren't any monsters in it, just him, and Doumeki, and a kitchen. In his nightmare, Watanuki created meal after meal, each a minor work of art, both exquisitely tasty and highly nutritious, and it all vanished into that ravening, ungrateful maw...

"But enough of such things." Yuuko waved a languid, long-nailed hand. "Where are my pictures?"

Watanuki thoughtfully weighed the bulky, antique camera in its case. "It took ages to get some of these," he said. "All that travelling, and the endless flights of stairs up to the temples. Waiting until the shadows were just right. Oh, and wasn't there a planetary conjunction over that temple that won't happen again for years and years and years? At least that's what you told me. Three times. It would be a shame if this camera was broken and the film exposed, wouldn't it?"

Yuuko rose up, drawing the shadows about her, and loomed over Watanuki as only a mistress of Time and All Other Dimensions could. "Are you threatening me?"

"... yes?"

She turned away. "Very good." She clapped her hands. "Maru. Moro. And get yourself a towl. Wherever they are. I can never find anything when you're gone, houseboy..." She wandered inside, muttering to herself.

Watanuki's shoulders relaxed and he shared a small, brave smile with Himawari-chan.

_Doumeki_

He was in a dark place, earthy-rich and strung with roots. His head hurt, and his arm in the cast was throbbing a slow rhythm.

A scritching sound, and a match flared. A small tanuki raccoon-dog was looking at him, lighting a glass-chimneyed lamp, while around them other tanuki chittered and stared.

"Watanuki Kimihiro-sama?"

"Hn?"

"Are you not the Glasses Wearing One? He of the Piebald Gaze? The Good Luck Cook?"

The followers intoned, "Blue and yellow. Like the sun in the sky."

Doumeki said nothing. If the little guys found out they'd bagged the wrong schoolboy, there wasn't anything to stop them going back for Watanuki but Yuuko-san's problematic mercies. He shifted the glasses perched on his nose and touched his right eye gingerly.

The tanuki in front set the lamp on the floor to wobble awkwardly and bowed deeply, setting three fingers of each paw to the dirt and knocking his head against it. "Would you, would you, Watanuki-sama, for these insignificant persons, would you not cook for us?"

Doumeki sat and thought.

"...I can make tea."

_Watanuki_

He exited the room he used at Yuuko's, still towelling his hair, and saw Himawari-chan and Maru and Moro set up by the paper screen (scrawled with crayon, dammit! You leave the house for _one week_ and – but anyway) seperating the customer area from the rest of the house. Maru lounged on a battered couch, drooping languidly, and her sister squatted on an overstuffed cushion on the floor. Himawari-chan knelt a little back from them, with her hands on her knees, looking at them both wide-eyed.

"... so we're asking you _now_," said Moro, smirking. "No, no, we never _steal._ We wouldn't _steal_ the boy." She giggled in a self-satisfied manner. "Your servant shall be returned in one piece when The Event has ended. We're good for the hirage fee." She drummed a brief tattoo on the cushion between her legs and Himawari winced.

On the couch, Maru raised one disdainful eyebrow. "For my dear Watanuki's services, I charge very high indeed."

Moro raised one blithe hand. "After we win, we will pay anything you ask."

Maru smiled, cruel, inscrutable, "Oh, you will. Pay." She waved one hand. "But this is tiresome. "Maru, Moro."

At that, the pair of little girls jumped up, trotted to Himawari, and each planted a kiss on one of her eyes, _mwah, mwah._ She giggled. Then her eyes opened wide with a strange pearly sheen over them. _"Ohhhhh,"_ she breathed, and hurried into the main room. Watanuki peeked after her.

In exactly the positions that the soulless girls had mimed out, Yuuko lounged on a gilt fainting couch and a small furry person squatted on a large pink cushion on the floor. His ears, like his nose, were very large, and from them protruded tawny bristles. He wore a stiff red jacket bedecked with gold braid, and GENERALISSIMO written on the back.

Himawari-chan knelt in front of him, bowing, and tugged one of the narrow white ribbons that pulled her torrents of hair back from her face. It fell with a sinister slither and she dropped it into the tanuki's paw. She fixed the little furry guy with a melting gaze and said, "Please pass this onto my friend. While I am sure that you are looking after him well I, I worry, and I want him to know that I am thinking of him." The tanuki froze wide-eyed, like an animal caught in headlights, stuttered, nodded, and fled, taking his cushion with him.

Watanuki's stomach sank down to the floor. Of course Himawari-chan loved Doumeki better, the cad.

Well, he'd worry about that later. However much Doumeki annoyed him with his quiet, and his appetite, and his luck with girls, and his infernal reliability, and his appetite, there was one part of Watanuki's recurring nightmare which he reckoned he could live with, the bit where Mr 'Excuse Me While I Throw Myself Into Mortal Peril (For You)' Doumeki survived. And that was that.

From the couch Yuuko said, "If you follow a recipe all the way through, you will always have tasty food at the end. But magic isn't cookery."

Himawari nodded, and rose from the floor. "Was this unwise?"

Yuuko shrugged. Then she said, "the Sight won't last, but consider your bill added to. I want cheesecake tomorrow."

Himawari froze, then lifted her sleeve to cover her mouth and giggled. She dropped her other white ribbon on the floor. Tilting her head like a bird, she caught Watanuki's eyes and said, "I worry about you too, Watanuki-kun. Please take care."

He loved the way she smelled. Today it was lemon and ginger with overtones of parsley, which was odd, but nice, and very refreshing in the fug of Yuuko's shop. He crossed the room in three long-legged strides and caught her hand. She froze, but forced a sunny smile. "You are a fool, Watanuki-kun."

He shrugged and smiled. "Take care, Himawari-chan." He walked her outside, to where two crescent moons adorned the posts of the gate.

There were two furry children standing just outside, a tiny fox boy in a stripy cotton kimono, and a little tanuki girl in a frilly dress with a ribbon.

"Please, Watanuki-san!" they said, clasping their hands together. "Please help us bring the light back to someone's benighted heart!"

_Chapter Three (the last) in a couple of days. There will be cheerleaders._


	3. Everybody Loves Cheerleaders

_Time to bring on the Very Special Guest: Man of Twenty Faces! Yayy!!_

**Chapter 3: Everybody Loves Cheerleaders**

_Watanuki_

It took some of them that way, ghosts, as if their stomachs had been filled with buoyant gas and they couldn't help but float, leaning forward a little and lifting their translucent feet off the ground. This time there were two of them, beautiful older women, each with an arm wrapped around the other's shoulders, shrieking, _!!We want it!!_

Watanuki blinked. "I'm sorry," he said to the gentleman in the tuxedo sitting next to him at a small foldable table. "I didn't quite catch what you said."

"Mmmbldfrgh," the gentleman replied.

"Oh!" said Watanuki, and removed the gag from the poor man.

"I said, 'Think nothing of it,'" the gentleman said cheerfully. "Might you perhaps remove the blindfold as well?"

Watanuki hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said at last, looking over the baseball stadium which they sat in the middle in, and up into the bleachers filled with weird and wonderful creatures – there was a guy with a hand for a head, trying to applaud, and a very long-necked woman, and a toaster with long, lithe, gym-toned legs, and a flock of floating fish, and of course the lady with the eyes - "but I don't think that would help much."

"As you think best," said the gentleman courteously. He really was being ridiculously nice about all this. His tuxedo had to be a custom-fit, Watanuki thought – nothing else would fit his broad-shouldered form so neatly. Even bound hand and foot, with additional rope wound tightly about his arms, the gentleman sat lithe and straight in his ladder-back chair, as if he were but a heartbeat away from kissing a lady's hand or sweeping his cloak over a puddle for her to walk on. Despite the stress of their situation, Watanuki was rather impressed.

_!!We really want it!!_

Watanuki set his bony hands flat on the table. "Let me explain, sir."

"Ijyuin," the gentleman said cheerfully. "Ijyuin Akira."

Watanuki thought for a moment – what to tell someone who couldn't see spirits? "Okay. So there are some groups in Tokyo who aren't exactly what you might call citizens-in-the-spotlight, who have an interest behind-the-scenes, as it were, and they are meeting right now to resolve a conflict, sort of... back-stage."

Ijyuin-san stiffened. "Are we on the top of Tokyo Tower?" he said urgently.

Watanuki blinked. "No, we're in a high-school stadium. It's a cooking contest, sir. Apparently last year they did ten-pin bowling."

Ijyuin-san relaxed. "Do go on."

_!!But we __neeeed__ it.!!_

"So anyway, the three groups in conflict – let'sjustforthesakeofcomfortablenomenclaturecallthem the Fox Group, the Crow Group, and the Tanuki Group – are fielding the best cooks they can find, but they also have the right to name a judge. That's you, me, and a, ahem, kokkuri board, sir." He lifted the sheet of paper marked with hiragana characters beautifully written around the sketch of a shrine-gate and rustled it so that Ijyuin-san could hear.

A small roar from the bleachers and Watanuki looked up to see the competitors coming from the bunkers to the center of the baseball diamond where the judges sat. "Oh now that's just wrong."

At the front was Doumeki, with furry ears on his head and a tail which swished slowly back and forth. Closer observation revealed a wire leading from the tail's tip to a stick waved carefully by little Tamame-chan, the tanuki girl in the frilly pink dress. She waved at Watanuki with her free paw, then hid it in her skirt and looked sheepish.

Watanuki frowned, troubled. He had promised to grant Tamame-chan's wish, because little girls belong to that class of people to which you cannot say no - especially if they have huge, jewel-like eyes - and because she and the Oden Fox's Son had wangled a judge's spot for him, and she was going to help rescue that idiot Doumeki if an appropriate opportunity presented itself, but he still had really no idea what to do. After all, it wasn't everyday you -

_!!But we wouldn't ask unless we really positively absolutely needed to have it right this minute!!_

Watanuki leaped from his chair and screamed, "No you do _not_ need it and could you please be _quiet_ I am trying to _think_ here!"

"Eh?" said Ijyuin-san.

Watanuki sighed, and asked, _sotto voce_ in Ijyuin-san's ear, "What would you say if I said that there were two transparent ladies pointing and shouting 'We want it'?"

Ijyuin-san looked inexplicably pleased, as if receiving a letter from a ten-year's-lost friend. "I think I might say, 'To what were they pointing?'"

"Oh," said Watanuki, "to the trophy behind us." He turned and squinted through the coloured contact lenses Yuuko had rented him. "It's a... it's a giant wooden statue of a grinning baby, with its feet sticking out so you can tickle them and a topknot on its head."

"Ah," said Ijyuin, "that sounds rather like Billiken, the Eighth God of Good Luck, which disappeared from Luna Park in Osaka City in 1923. Very good."

Watanuki blinked.

"Art history is rather my hobby," said Ijyuin. "Ahaha."

_Doumeki_

This wasn't exactly how he'd planned to spend his first day back, but the weather was sunny. Doumeki paced stolidly across the grass of the stadium field, his left arm still in a sling, surrounded by tanuki, small and brown and fluffy but vaguely humanoid, adorned with odd bits of apparel. A platoon of little guys in black trench-coats and dark glasses jogged in step a little behind and to his left, their heads bald but for tufts of hair over their forehead. To his right, an antique Oden cart was pushed by an elderly fox in a striped kimono and a scarf, and a similarly dressed small fox trotted beside. He stopped and bowed formally to the pair. They bowed back.

The little rabid tanuki in the scarlet jacket whacked him on the head with the scabbard of his ornamental saber. "Hey! No fraternizing!" He ignored it.

"Don't worry," whispered the little girl wagging his tail behind him. "We have a man in place to provide aid and assistance. Do your best, okay?"

He nodded.

In the stands, a variety of interesting people were cheering them all on. Also, there appeared to be cheerleaders. Three cheerleaders. It was hard to tell through Watanuki's borrowed and blurry glasses, but the tall one with the long swinging braids and the fetishistically short red skirt might be Yuuko, that fox-faced woman. From the silhouette of bountiful hair, the Tanukis' cheerleader might possibly be Kunogi Himawari – wonder how she got here? - and the shy girl who stole his soul that one time blushed and waved cute yellow pompoms for the bald guys in jackets. Huh.

He continued walking to setup at the centre of the stadium, where the pinwheeling limbs and stream of sharp-edged _non sequiturs_ revealed that the 'man in place' could not be other than that moron Watanuki. Doumeki clenched his jaw.

_Watanuki_

Back at the judge's table, further explanations were incoming. "...I mean," said Watanuki, waving his hands for emphasis, "the Tanuki Generalissimo is cheating. But in such a stupid way. Everybody's going to _know_. Kidnapping you and my fr-eheh- acquaintance and annoying everybody. It will only bring down more trouble.

"I sympathise with them," he said, more quietly. "The Tanuki Group used to own all this area before the urban development. It was _theirs_ and they lost it. And now they keep fighting over that Billiken statue with all the, the good influence it brings, and losing. I bet they get rained on a lot too," Watanuki added, half-savagely.

"So Tamame-chan says the Generalissimo turned nasty last year, after he lost with an Inside Split. But he really doesn't look haunted or possessed or anything like that, so I don't know how I'm going to grant her wish and 'heal his heart' because I just don't understand why he acts like that."

"Perhaps the Generalissimo is saying, 'I love you so much I would dishonour myself for you,' " said Ijyuin-san equably.

Watanuki's eyes slid sideways and he regarded Ijyuin-san dubiously.

"There are many ways to say 'I love you.' My mothers used to say it by never being able to find random items of household paraphernalia without me. My wife says it by knitting me gloves for when I am out on heis- hobby expeditions, and I say it back by being home at 8 sharp for dinner. My senpais said it by intervening in matters far beyond their scope, once upon a time in 1999..." He laughed softly in the back of his throat. "And sometimes we say it by dressing up as Santa."

"Ah! They're starting," pointed out Watanuki, then put his pointing finger back down.

One of the tengu, the little bald guys in black sunglasses and trenchcoats, stepped to the forefront. He shrugged off his coat and the pinstripe jacket underneath, revealing a snowy white shirt and cheerful yellow suspenders holding up his ample, high-waisted trousers. He rolled the sleeves up around his plump white forearms and brandished his fists in the air. "On behalf of the Tengu Group: black winged, tricksy footed, true hearted, for the Crows of Tokyo City I shall make... _Black Fire Mountain Curry_."

The crowd in the stand cheered wildly as the Zashiki-warashi jumped in the air waving her pom-poms. The Zashiki-warashi blushed and looked down, her feet in thick-heeled yellow sneakers set so that the toes pointed slightly together. The crowd went _Awwwww_ and all the little tengu hugged each other and sighed.

The Oden Fox bowed to the judges, and then to the crowd. "On behalf of the Foxes of Tokyo City, this insignificant person will attempt his family's traditional cookery." His son clutched his bushy tail and looked down. _Awwwwww_. Then the Oden Fox clapped a paw over his son's eyes as a chorus of in-drawn breaths marked the start of Yuuko's cheering routine. Watanuki didn't actually have to erase the routine from his memory – he simply bashed his head madly against the table until it was over.

Then Watanuki looked up again, because Himawari-chan was jumping and cheering and waving her cute blue pom-poms. One of them slipped from her hands and flew in a delightful arc over the crowd. _Urgh!_ went someone in the crowd.

The Genralissimo strutted forward, gaudy in his red jacket. "For the Tanuki Gang of Tokyo City," he said, slapping Doumeki on the arm, "This is our man Wa. Wa Tanuki, that's him."

The crowd hushed expectantly, waiting to hear what he would produce.

"... I can make tea."

_to be continued_

NOTES:

_a guy with a hand for his head_ He's very into zen.

_a very long-necked woman_ She's a _rokurokubi_.

_a toaster with long, lithe, gym-toned legs_ I'm tolerably certain there were some walking artifacts in the Hyakki Yakou but far, far too lazy to check through my books.

_a flock of floating fish_ The _neko-musume_ swallowed one somewhere in the Spider's Grudge Arc.

_and of course the lady with the eyes _Don't look at me: I don't know. It's all messed up.

_"Are we on the top of Tokyo Tower?"_ Akira refers, of course, to the climactic events ending _X/1999_. Actually, with the structure's great potential for drama, any conflict up there would be a bit alarming. Conversely, once you've dealt with a potential apocalypse (Akira doesn't show in the anime but he must have been in Nokoru's train somewhere), anything else is very small potatoes.

_kokkuri board_ Readers may remember the fortune-telling game _Angel-san_, from early in the series – a sheet of paper with a lot of characters written on it around a 'shrine-gate', used roughly like a _ouija_ board. Yuuko mentions its other names, including _Prophecy-san_ and _Kokkuri-san_. 'Kokkuri' is written with kanji characters for fox, tanuki, and tengu, though I can't remember which order, and I think the board was originally supposed to be used for talking to those worthy spirits. Apologies if I messed up my folklore here. (I got most of it from _Ghost Hunt_, and the rest from _Shaman King_. Ehehe.)

_shrine-gate_ The thing that looks like the grid for noughts and crosses, only the verticle strokes slipped down a bit. Often red. Turns up at shrines and temples a lot.

_Tamame-chan_ Please enjoy my made up name! Kanji = _tama_ (jewel, round object, ball) + _me_ (eye).

_Billiken_ I didn't invent this guy, I got him from the Internet, which is never wrong. Go look him up - _so cool._

_fox-faced woman_ == woman with a narrow face and high, narrow eyebrows

_Wa_ Can mean a lot of things, but let's go for 'peace and harmony'. :-)

One more chapter, almost complete. Please don't kill me Daisy Ninja Girl!


	4. Cook For Your Life!

**Chapter 4: Cook For Your Life!**

_Doumeki_

(Hideyoshi's great tea-master Sen no Rikyu said once, _If you do not follow the Way of Tea, it is as nothing._)

The crowd in the stands hushed as each competitor, representing the Kitsune, the Tengu, and the Tanuki respectively, began their preparations.

The Oden Fox had it simplest, calmly working at his wheeled oden stand as he had done for many decades, moving with the elegant efficiency of long practice. His son scurried about feeding sticks of wood to the fire and skewering tentacles, as needed.

The representative of the Tengu peeled potatoes with great flair, tossing each one high in the air. Then, _flash_, his sharp little knife skinned it and the pale raw body sank to sleep with the others in a bucket of water.

A small metal brazier had been set up on the grass of the baseball diamond, and a woven-straw mat laid out. Doumeki knelt there and considered. His arm was still in its sling. Little Tamame untied the sling's knot from his neck and let the arm drop. He could move the fingers a little: it would be enough. In the heat of the full sun he was starting to sweat. Seeing it, Tamame unlatched his high collar, baring his throat and a narrow white ribbon.

He smiled briefly at her. Tamame's furry cheeks blushed and she settled at another side of the square cloth. The Oden Fox's Son waved to her with a tentacle on a stick and she blushed again, until her father knocked her on the head with his knuckles and her large, jewel-like eyes hardened into flint.

Then the Generallisimo clutched at Doumeki's jacket and put a sharp point against a pulsing vein revealed by the open collar. "Remember," he hissed. "Bag us Billiken, or it's the gin-trap for you. Get me?"

Doumeki stared at him.

The Generallisimo let go awkwardly, stepped to the square-framed fire pit, and in a puff of steam transformed into a fat iron tea-kettle, its round belly already glowing a fierce, passionate red from the coals it sat over. Angry steam spurted from the spout.

At the judge's table, Watanuki had leapt to his feet, his spidery limbs and cracked little head spasming into a fit (a nice, zesty, angry one, as opposed to the 'Something's eating me!' the 'I am a lovesick and tactless fool,' or the 'One breath from hysteria' varieties. So it was all good.). Time to begin.

(Sen no Rikyu continued, _The Way of Tea is this: First boil the water, then make the tea.)_

_Watanuki_

"No no no no no no no no no _no_," exclaimed Watanuki, clutching desperately at his head. "He's wearing Himawari-chan's ribbon around his neck in a pretty little boooowww! I knew it! They've been bonding while my back was tuuuuuurned."

"There, there," said Ijyuin-san. "I'm sure he likes you best."

Watanuki spluttered, tripped on a leg of the chair and ended up falling to land face-down on the grass. "You sound like Himawari-chan," he mumbled.

"I'm sure she likes you best, too," Ijyuin-san said bracingly.

"'Mnot some kind of a pervert."

"Oh." Ijyuin-san cocked his head curiously. "Did you think love and sex were the same thing? Huh."

Watanuki spat grass from his mouth and looked up. His eyes narrowed. "There's blood on his throat," he said tensely, moving to rise.

A friendly but heavy foot between his shoulder-blades held him down. "Why don't we sit quietly and watch events unfold a little longer, hmm?"

_Doumeki_

It was easy in the austerities of making tea to lose oneself in the bowl and the whisk and the shush of breath through nostrils. But Doumeki did not like to not see things. He looked around.

To one side, delicious smells emanated from the oden stand. To the other, a little guy in a zoot suit shook an enormous frying pan over his fire with delicate movements of his deceptively pudgy wrists.

Watanuki had gotten up from rolling around in the grass and now sat at the table dangling a narrow white ribbon between two fingers and poking his tongue out. Idiot.

"What did you say?!" spluttered Watanuki.

Oh. Thinking out loud again. "Oi, I'm trying to work here."

Watanuki spluttered. Then, "Hey, how can you hear me?"

Doumeki shrugged.

"Are you... alright?" Watanuki asked.

"You shouldn't be here," Doumeki said bluntly.

Watanuki flushed bright red and clenched the ribbon between both white-knuckled hands. Suddenly, Doumeki couldn't breathe. He clutched at the ribbon around his throat with his good hand as his vision pulsed red, then black...

When he opened his eyes he was looking up at the sky, with a side view of whiskers. Tamame helped him sit and fussed over him. It was really annoying. At the judge's table, Watanuki leaned back from his ribbon as if it were a snake, looking deeply unhappy.

Right. He propped a tea-bowl back into his bad hand and picked up the whisk. _Then make the tea._

_Watanuki_

So after he almost murdered his friend with someone else's hair-ribbon, Watanuki didn't have much heart for paying attention to the proceedings. Still, eventually there was a plate full of black sludge mixed with potatoes sitting in front of him. _(TenGU TenGU Yaaaaaayyyy!!!)_ He took an absent-minded bite. It was rather nice, with a good balance of spices and a solid heartiness to it and then his head blew up.

When he pulled himself back from the mushroom cloud, he saw Ijyuin bright red and shaking as beads of sweat crawled down his face. The Oden Fox and his son, trying a sample plate of their competitor's brewing, leaned weakly against the stall, their tails frizzing out as they vulpinely struggled to clean their plates. On the other hand, Doumeki munched stolidly through his serving and held his plate out for more. Watanuki felt it was probably maybe okay to hate him again now.

There was a plate of curry by the kokkuri board. With shaking hands, the two other judges worked a whiskey-glass planchette over the letters. "T H E S I G N S A R E N O T F A V O U R A B - Oh, the next entry?"

_(Give me an O! Give me a D! Give me an E! Give me an N! Gimme gimme gimme some o' that tentaclllle.)_ There's nothing like a good box of oden to make a man's day: it's a classic. Watanuki found himself lost in visions - day after gentle day of working at the same stall, a stall replenished as each board of it wore out and was replaced yet always essentially the same, and the flow of customers weird and wonderful, a steady river of familiar faces gradually added to, and working, old sure paws in tandem with young uncertain ones, and the recurring oden, an existence of fresh raw ingredients and old familiar flavours...

The only thing to make it better would be a chilly day, to encourage a cold body to curl around the warmth of the oden. It was still pretty good.

"Y E S."

One more. Tamame-chan the little tanuki girl trotted forward and placed a cup on the table in front of each judge. _(Do your best Watanuki-kun and Doumeki-kun!)_

"Hmm, this is very interesting," said Ijyuin-san, turning his cup around delicately and sipping from it. "Is that overtones of bergamot? Nice legs. It has a lovely warmth to it. But I don't recognise the brand."

"It's tea of the river of life," said Watanuki, his voice strange. "That idiot made it for me once."

"Ah, for a special occasion?"

"No, not at all. I was just wet from the rain and walking under the cherry trees, and I gave my umbrella away, and, well, things. And he shoved this at me and dumped a towl on my head. Probably decade-old dusty leaves from his grandad's forgotten tea caddy," he added loudly. But he smiled, eyes dropping to the steaming cup his hands wrapped around.

Watanuki and Ijyuin-san put their fingers on the planchette and let it move quasi-erratically over the kokkuri board. "M Y S O U R C E S S A Y..." Watanuki spelled out, then paused. "N O. Oh well. Guess you lose, Doumeki!" Then he clapped a hand over his mouth. "Oh dear."

"That's it," shrieked the red-bellied tea-kettle, transforming back into the Generalissimo, "You die!" He drew a saber and dived for Doumeki who, legs numb from kneeling in front of the tea-things, was awkward to rise. The judges' table fell with a crash as Watanuki leapt over it, spidery legs moving desperately.

But the person who reached Doumeki first was Tamame-chan, who threw herself in-between, arms akimbo, her whiskers shaking with rage.

_"I can't let you dishonour yourself, Dad."_

_"Get out of my way, girl. We will be avenged for this disgrace._

_"No, Dad, no!"_

The Generalissimo snarled and suddenly darted to the side, snatching up a white ribbon off the ground. He wrapped the ends about his paws and wrenched: distantly a girl screamed. Doumeki fell to his knees, choking. Watanuki frantically seized the ribbon from the Generalissimo. He realised he'd never _actually_ beaten somebody to a bloody pulp before, but that it would be fun to try.

Ijyuin-san said suddenly, "This has all been very fun, but I am afraid that I must be going if I am to be home for dinner." He stood up, the last ropes about him falling away elegantly, and whipped away his blindfold. He replaced it with a domino mask that he pushed up his nose with one elegant finger, placed a tophat on his head, and removed a small bouquet of flowers from his buttonhole which he blew on gently. They blossomed into a flock of twittering, multi-coloured birds that pulled him into the sky as he waved cheerily down at them, the rays of the lowering sun glinting off a golden ring on his left hand.

"Hey!" said one of the tengu. "Where did the trophy go?" Indeed, the large wooden Billiken statue was nowhere to be seen.

"Look," said the Oden Fox's Son, pointing. Across the sky soared a banner, with the words _The Man of Twenty Faces Always Gets His God_ scribed across it in friendly pink letters.

"Wow," said the tengu chef.

The Generalissimo and Tamame-chan looked at each other. They looked at the bare pedestal where the statue had leered. They looked at Watanuki trying to both bandage Doumeki's bleeding throat _and_ strangle him to mewling, pitiful death simultaneously while their very own rented cheerleader looked on awkwardly, reaching out a hand only to snatch it back. Himawari raised a small, unhappy cheer. Doumeki pulled her into a sideways hug, and as she stiffened said, "That's my brave girl." She laughed shortly, dropped a peck of a kiss on his forehead, and ran away. Watanuki spluttered. "What, did you want one too? Erk. Can't. Breathe."

The Generalissimo and Tamame-chan looked back at each other, threw themselves into each other's arms, and started bawling.

"I think we've all come to a lovely, mellow place here," said Yuuko, who appeared suddenly, clapping her hands and smiling predatorily. "My bill will be at your burrow in the morning," she added to the Generalissimo, who simply nodded absently and patted his sobbing daughter on the back. Yuuko's smile widened. "Plus surcharges for late payment, inconvenience, rough handling, emotional hardship, and missing my afternoon shows." The Generalissimo waved a distracted hand.

"But we didn't do anything," Watanuki hissed frantically as he pulled the bandage around Doumeki's neck nice and tight.

"Ah, ah, ah," said Yuuko, lifting one admonishing finger. "It was ineffable." And she sauntered away, her long black braids swinging jauntily.

"Erk," said Doumeki.

The Zashiki-warashi tugged at Watanuki's sleeve and blushed. "Um. Would you maybe not be interested in the Go Fish and Fan Tan Showdown with the Edogawa Kappa Conglomerate next month?"

The last of the sun's orange rays slanted over the stands. _"Hey!_ a shout shattered the calm of the tableau. _"What the hell are you kids up to?"_ The moment shattered. Watanuki blinked, and found himself standing in the centre of the baseball diamond with Doumeki as a horde of small animals scattered from a caretaker brandishing a rake. A cloud of crows flew up around them. The schoolboys fled.

_Epilogue_

They stumped along the street.  
"So," said Watanuki. "Dinner at my place?"

"Hn," said Doumeki.

"Why is there a book labelled _A History of Shogen Ryori, as Practiced in Three Great Monasteries_ sitting in my bag?"

"..."

_End_

NOTES:

_white ribbons_ Okay, so couldn't fit an explanation without bogging down the story still further. In the story where Watanuki rescued a hydrangea bush, they used Himawari's hair-ribbons as a link to pull him out of the void under the hydrangeas. I s'pect Himawari was trying to pull a similar trick, it just didn't work out how she expected. But everybody's fine and nobody lost an eye. It was ineffable.

_Erk. Can't. Breathe._ Am arguing that Doumeki's blood transfusion shared his immunity to Himawari, thus diluting his own protection a little. Because it fits the plot that way.

_Kappa_ Japanese water sprite. I think they need to cover their heads with bowls to keep their pates dry.

_Edogawa_ 'Edogawa' literally means 'the Edo river' (Edo being the old name for Tokyo.) Also, check out the extra reference to _Man of Many Faces_. Go me!

And a very special thanks to:

Daisy Ninja Girl

Judikickshiney

And

Hikari980

You made me feel so much better about writing this.


End file.
